"At that time the department had jurisdiction over a little less than 185,000 acres. Less than 15% was allocated to Kanaka Maoli. Most of the rest was leased to others. Sixty-nine families lived on ranch size parcels, 365 families lived on farms of around 40 acres, and 2,000 families lived on house lots, some as small as 7,500 square feet. Thus, from 1921 to 1959, a total of 2,434 families were situated on homestead lands.

"In connection with the new state's urge to reform the government's

administrative departments and promised land reforms, the 1960s witnessed a wealth of investigations and reports about the Hawaiian homelands program. According to DHHL's 1964 report to the legislature, the homesteader fell below the national and state median income, and also below the average Kanaka Maoli non-homesteader in most social aspects. Since it appeared that the homesteader had not made appreciable changes in one generation, the question arose about the effectiveness of the Hawaiian homestead program and whether or not it stimulated individual improvement and rehabilitation (DHHL 1964).

"The overall conclusions from the various investigations in the 1960's were

that the program had failed to homestead people, especially on agricultural lands; that it had failed to "modernize" or "Americanize" the Känaka Maoli; that much of the land was rented out for compensations way below their market value; and that no accurate land inventory existed. Innumerable stories and testimonies attest to fraud, favoritism, and disappearing waiting lists. Many Kanaka Maoli died without ever catching an award. The sheer length of the list is pointing to a major problem in the administration of the program. In effect, agricultural rehabilitation had been supplanted by a residential housing program. The original rationale for the HHC was thus, over time, reversed. Hawaiian "rehabilitation" came to be seen as an urban problem to be met primarily by aiding home building. Some of the investigators suggested to take this fact to its logical consequence: if the department wanted to rehabilitate (that is, at this time, Americanize) Kanaka Maoli, it should exchange or sell its lands and use the funding to settle the beneficiaries in houses "pepper- potted" among

"In the final version, the section on "Hawaiian Rehabilitation" was relegated to an explicitly minor role in the omnibus bill while the colonial form of land expropriation won out. Large corporations were then free to control the bidding at public auctions of leases to the 26, 000 acres of highly cultivated "public land" without threat of withdrawal for any homesteads, and without the 1, 000- acre limit that had been imposed in the 1900 Organic Act (Murakami 1991: 47). Thus, the major impetus behind the HHCA was revealed ----- to amend the Organic Act land laws by repealing homesteading for the general public under the pretext of rehabilitating Hawaiians. ( Kauanui 2008: 164) "

"The bill refers to the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 without any acknowledgement that the lands the US government "set aside" were 203,500 acres of the stolen 1. 8 million acres of Kingdom Crown and Government Lands. This part, and other parts throughout the bill, assert that all of these lands now belong to the USA or the State of Hawai'i, and therefore the bill masks the ongoing theft and illegitimate means by which the USA took Hawai'i. This is repeated throughout in all reference to Hawai'i becoming a state, references to the Kingdom and Crown lands as a "public trust," and naming this land base "ceded lands."......."

"..... His efforts in this line culminated in the passage in 1921 by this Congress of the Hawaiian Homes Commission act, a measure to provide homesteads for native Hawaiians for an indefinite term at a nominal rental and for government loans to the settlers. The Prince was made one of the commissioners and took great interest in the practical carrying out of his dream. At his death his wife, the Princess, was appointed to his place on the commission. " --

Hon. Henry Alexander Baldwin,

Representative from the State Hawaii

January 7, 1923

"The legal basis for the establishment of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) is the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, 1920, as amended (HHCA). Passed by Congress and signed into law by President Warren Harding on July 9, 1921 (chapter 42, 42 Stat. 108), the HHCA provides for the rehabilitation of the native Hawaiian people through a government-sponsored homesteading program. Native Hawaiians are defined as individuals having at least 50 percent Hawaiian blood."